The great non-distress PLB hunt is on!

[RiverAux]

While we all know that finding PLB signals is the responsibility of the state (though the AF is involved in passing the info) it seems to me that the false alarm rate has been relatively low and that most activated PLBs are for "real" emergencies.  I'm not aware of any statistics on this (the AFRCC doesn't break it down for the PLB missions they were involved in in their annual report) so my impression could be wrong. 

And while there have been a few cases where CAP has been asked to assist in PLB missions, for the most part local and state agencies have jumped on them pretty quickly. 

Well, this story from Denver might only be the beginning of the a trend towards false alarm activations for PLBs. 
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/22075705/detail.html

Now, remember even if the false alarm RATE continues to be low, the NUMBER of false alarms is bound to rise.  Considering how cheap PLBs are becoming, it won't be long before tens or even hundreds of thousands of individuals in every state have them and more and more false or other non-distress activations will occur.

I foresee that there will come a tipping point when the local and state agencies get overwhelmed with PLB calls and that they just won't be able or won't want to try to respond to them all with their paid personnel and that they will make a bigger effort to get CAP involved in them. 

While we know that the AF will often pay for CAP involvement in SAR missions that have only local interest and no federal nexus, I wonder if this will continue to be the case for PLB missions.  The AF will already have been involved, but will they try to get the states to pay for CAP's response in these situations?  Hard to tell, but if PLB sales and false alarms continue to grow, I think that at some point CAP will be back in business almost to the point where we were with ELTs. 

[Flying Pig]

The PLBs I have been involved in looking for, the company had called dispatch directly.  Their was no AFRCC involvement.  And the nice thing is that  there really has been no searching per se in the ones I have gone on since it provides a GPS coordinate.  I think I got one in UTM.  They have all been in the Sierras, completely inaccessible by vehicle.  We landed, coordinated the rescue because the people had been injured, and we were done.  No paperwork or anything.  I do recall now that one was a person who just wanted to see if it worked.  We found him too.

[Smithsonia]

These have been passed on through the Sheriff's Dept. While I saw the story today in the Post, I was surprised that it hasn't been on the Statewide (Colorado) alert system... (which is CAP/IC activated) although there is a subset of the alert board available for the mountains... usually we on the front range (Denver, Ft. Collins, Co Spgs. Pueblo) get hit by even the false alarms. Perhaps there is either a new protocol that I am not up to speed on... or more likely... because it's a PRB it goes straight to Mountain Rescue and the County Sheriff. There is a different CAP MU for the mountains than the plains Sheriffs Dept. In the mountains - unless it is a plane - we are called second or third. The national guard is using helio's to respond. Here's a recent story. I don't think we were called on this one either. http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_14078653